McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic Corp.

150 F.3d 651 (7th Cir. 1998)

[NOTE: Please read this case to see how Judge Learned Hand’s analysis in Carroll Towing (CB
p. 47) works in a contemporary fact pattern. Then consider the questions at the end of the case.]

During a break from a long-distance auto trip, Jack McMahon bought a cup of coffee from the
mini mart at a Mobil station. Jack asked Angelina McMahon, his wife, to remove the plastic lid
while he drove. Angelina decided to pour some of the coffee into a smaller cup that would be
easier for Jack to handle. In the process the coffee flooded her lap; Angelina suffered second and
third degree burns that caused her pain for months and produced scars on her left thigh and lower
abdomen. Angelina believes that the Styrofoam cup collapsed, either because it was poorly made
or because inordinately hot coffee weakened its structure. The McMahons' claims against the
producers of the cup and lid have been settled. The third defendant is Bunn–O–Matic
Corporation, which manufactured the coffee maker. According to the McMahons, the
temperatures at which Bunn's apparatus brews and serves coffee—195° F during the brewing
cycle and 179° F as the “holding” temperature of a carafe on its hotplate—are excessive, and its
design therefore defective. . . .

[In the district court below, summary judgment was granted for the defendant. Plaintiffs appeal.]

[A] design-defect claim in Indiana is a negligence claim, subject to the understanding that
negligence means failure to take precautions that are less expensive than the net costs of
accidents. . . .

Coffee at 180° F is considerably more likely to cause severe burns than is coffee at 135° to 140°
F, the maximum at which Diller believes that coffee should be served. Moreover, because it is
costly to serve coffee hot (it takes electricity to keep the hotplate on), risks could be reduced for
a negative outlay. How can it not be negligent to spend money for the purpose of making a
product more injurious? But of course people spend money to increase their risks all the time—
they pay steep prices for ski vacations; they go to baseball games where flying bats and balls
abound; they buy BB guns for their children knowing that the pellets can maim. They do these
things because they perceive benefits from skiing, baseball, and target practice. . . . To determine
whether a coffee maker is defective because it holds the beverage at 179°, we must understand
the benefits of hot coffee in relation to its costs. As for costs, the record is silent. We do not
know whether severe burns from coffee are frequent or rare. On the other side of the ledger there
are benefits for all coffee drinkers. Jack McMahon testified that he likes his coffee hot. Why did
the American National Standards Institute set 170° F as the minimum temperature at which
coffee should be held ready to serve? Diller does not make any effort to reconcile his “maximum
140° F” position with the ANSI's “minimum 170° F” position—though this is something that an
engineer would be sure to do in scholarly work. On this topic, too, Diller's affidavit is worthless
because unreasoned. Without some way to compare the benefits of a design change (fewer and
less severe burns) against the costs (less pleasure received from drinking coffee), it is impossible
to say that designing a coffee maker to hold coffee at 179° F bespeaks negligent inattention to
the risks. . . .
The ANSI minimum of 170° F prevents us from treating as obvious the absence of benefits from
temperatures above 140°. What is more, even a little investigation (albeit unassisted by the
parties) shows that there may be good reasons for selecting a temperature over 170° F, as several
other courts have recognized. See Michael Sivetz & H. Elliott Foote, 2 Coffee Processing
Technology ch. 19.2 (1963). The smell (and therefore the taste) of coffee depends heavily on the
oils containing aromatic compounds that are dissolved out of the beans during the brewing
process. Brewing temperature should be close to 200° F to dissolve them effectively, but without
causing the premature breakdown of these delicate molecules. Coffee smells and tastes best
when these aromatic compounds evaporate from the surface of the coffee as it is being drunk.
Compounds vital to flavor have boiling points in the range of 150° F to 160° F, and the beverage
therefore tastes best when it is this hot and the aromatics vaporize as it is being drunk. For coffee
to be 150° F when imbibed, it must be hotter in the pot. Pouring a liquid increases its surface
area and cools it; more heat is lost by contact with the cooler container; if the consumer adds
cream and sugar (plus a metal spoon to stir them) the liquid's temperature falls again. If the
consumer carries the container out for later consumption, the beverage cools still further. Our
point in discussing these issues is not to endorse Sivetz & Foote; their position may be
scientifically contestable. It is only to demonstrate that without evidence that a holding
temperature of 180° F is of little worth to consumers, plaintiffs cannot show that the choice of a
high temperature makes coffee defective.

It is easy to sympathize with Angelina McMahon, severely injured by a common household

beverage—and, for all we can see, without fault on her part. Using the legal system to shift the
costs of this injury to someone else may be attractive to the McMahons, but it would have bad
consequences for coffee fanciers who like their beverage hot. First-party health and accident
insurance deals with injuries of the kind Angelina suffered without the high costs of
adjudication, and without potential side effects such as lukewarm coffee. We do not know
whether the McMahons carried such insurance (directly or through an employer's health plan),
but we are confident that Indiana law does not make Bunn and similar firms insurers through the
tort system of the harms, even grievous ones, that are common to the human existence.

AFFIRMED

QUESTIONS:
1. What is the “untaken precaution” that plaintiff presented in this case?
2. What factors discussed in the opinion would you plug into each variable of the Hand
Formula: B < PL?
3. Why might customers taste preferences for coffee matter in a B < PL analysis?
4. What evidence might have aided the plaintiff in surviving the defendant’s motion for
summary judgment?
5. How would you analyze the facts in this case from the perspective of Adams v. Bullock
(p. 44)?
6. How would you analyze the facts from the perspective of Bolton v. Stone (p. 51, note 7)?